"Controversies are the place where the most heterogeneous relationships are formed"."In a few words, when you look for controversies, search where collective life gets most complex: where the largest and most diverse assortment of actors is involved; where alliances and opposition transform recklessly; where nothing is simple as it seems; where everyone is shouting and quarrelling; where conflicts grow harshest. There, you will find the object of the cartography of controversies." (Venturini, Diving in Magma)Por que as cartografias de controvérsias são complexas?

1. Primeiro por que a vida coletiva e social é complexa e deve ser reconhecida enquanto tal. "Collective situations are always intricate and the more actors are concerned, the more intricate they can get (especially if non-human actors are involved)." (Venturini, Diving...)

"...social cartography requires hard work, it is because social life itself is made of hard work. Claiming to have simple access to simplicity, while actors are constantly struggling to manage complexity, would be disrespectful at best." (Venturini, Diving...)"To understand how social phenomena are built it is not enough to observe the actors alone nor is it enough to observe social networks once they are stabilized. What should be observed are the actors-networks - that is to say, the fleeting configurations where actors are renegotiating the ties of old networks and the emergence of new networks is redefining the identity of actors. These configurations constitute the object of ANT as well as of the cartography of controversies" (Venturini, Diving...)Como escolher uma boa controvérsia. Mesmo se todo fenômeno social possa ser objeto de controvérsia, nem todos são um bom objeto de estudo. Segue algumas recomendações para evitar uma más controvérsias

1. Evite controvérsias frias que não estejam harmonizadas ou com indiferenças por parte dos atores: Good controversies are always ‘hot’: they may involve limited number of actors, but there must be some action going on.

2. Da literatura aos actantes. Mapear as controvérsias é ir das declarações e da literatura aos diversos actantes que compõem a controvérisa. Sendo um actante todo agente (humano e não-humano) que produz ação sobre outro. Actante: "just ask yourself if its presence or absence does make any difference. If it does and if this difference is perceived by other actors, then it is an actor".(Venturini, Diving...) Mas isso não significa que todos os actantes têm a mesma importância.Latour (in Venturni, Diving): “Being connected, being interconnected, being heterogeneous, is not enough. It all depends on the sort of action that is flowing from one to the other, hence the words ‘net’ and ‘work’. Really, we should say ‘worknet’ instead of ‘network’. It’s the work, and the movement, and the flow, and the changes that should be stressed". (On using ANT for Studying Information Systems..., 2004, p. 63)Como criar ricos dispositivos de observação:

"The worthiest contribution that cartographic observation can give to collective discussion is not to reduce its complexity, but to make sure that it remains complex enough for every voice to be listened to." (Venturini,???)

2. Quando observamos as controvérsias, olhamos para o estado líquido das tensões e quando descrevemos começamos a ver as solidificações do magma.Observing a controversy is like setting up a scientific observatory: the quality of observation depends on the capacity to multiply the number and increase the sensitivity of monitoring devices. Only by accumulating notes, documents, interviews, surveys, archives, experiments, statistics, can researchers strive not to reduce the amazing richness of collective life.Como apresentar as Controvérsias.O cartógrafo dos social deve ir ao seu território fazendo notas, planos, croquis para mapea-lo. Os mapas são feitos a partir de ajustes entre as observações e as descrições. Mas o mapa não é o território observado, mas uma representação dele e assim deve ser. Eles deve torna as controvérsias legítimas.Nas cartografias, as objetividades devem ser de múltiplos graus. Tudo deve ser levado em conta mas em hierarquias diferenciadas. Pode-se pensar em três instâncias: representatividade, influência e interesse.1. Representatividade: um ponto de vista ou afirmação compartilhada por múltiplos actante merecer ser mais destacada do que outra com menos "representação" ou marginal. "Yet, maps should avoid flattening the landscape of public debate. Not all perspectives are equally supported and social cartographers should find ways to render such disparity."2. Influência. As posições não são iguais e há desníveis, diferenças e discrepâncias nas lutas pelas afirmações. Atores com posições influêntes devem ser observados já que eles podem criar ou destruir controvérsias: "Actors occupying influential positions deserves a special attention because, like it or not, they will have better chances to shape controversies."3. Interesse. Dado que a representatividade e a influência são fatores importantes, o cartógrafo deve dar espaço à interesses dispersos e minoritários. Em muitos casos são esses interesses que abrem caixas-pretas. "Controversy mapping cannot content itself with majority reports, as the very rise of disputes depends on the presences of disagreeing minorities. It is disagreeing minorities who bring controversies into existence by refusing to settle with the mainstream and reopening the black boxes of science and technology."Researchers can focus on a sample of representative actors or concentrate on the most influential or spotlight marginal viewpoints, as long as they can justify their choice.Construir mapas de controvérsias deve levar em conta três precauções: adapatação, redundância e felxibilidade. A primeira é transformar o terreno em algo plano. Deve se adaptar as diversas posições dos actantes: "Resting on a patchwork of conflicting representations, cartographic constructions should remain as flat as possible. They should stretch to cover as many native representations and overlay as least interpretative layers as possible."A segunda precaução é a que diz respeito às redundâncias. Uma cartografia não significa colocar tudo em um único mapa. Questões se sobrepões e muitos mapas podem ser feitos: "The key for drawing effective representations is drawing many of them: each one dedicated to a different aspect of the phenomenon. Even if each map fails in capturing the richness of the disputes, all together they may do the trick."A terceira precaução é em relação à flexibilidade. As cartigrafias devem ser felxiveis e não se rederem à tentação de esgotar o problema em uma totalidade, mas que posso ajustar e adaptar perspectivas diferenciadas: "Even more than redundancy and adaptation, controversies mapping need flexibility to cling to the shacking ground of controversies. Collective disputes can only be described by maps that are supple enough to adjust to their dynamism".To sum up, the objectivity of cartographic representations depends on the quantity and the quality of the work spent to build them. What is true for buildings is true for representations as well: the better they are built (the more they adapt to their territory, the more they are redundant and flexible), the more solid they will be.Digital - Comunicação e InformáticaRecomendações para contruir uma cartografia de controvérsias:

1. you shall listen to actors’ voices more than to your own presumptions;2. you shall observe from as many viewpoints as possible;3. you shall not restrain your observation to any single theory or methodology;4. you shall adjust your descriptions and observations recursively;5. you shall simplify complexity respectfully;6. you shall attribute to each actor a visibility proportional to its weight;7. you shall provide descriptions that are adapted, redundant and flexible.Rastros e Traços Digitais.

"Consider any controversy and you will have a clear illustration of the meaning of the hyphen in Actor-Network Theory. In controversies, any actor can be decomposed in a loose network and any network, not matter how heterogeneous, can coagulate to function as an actor" (Venturini, Diving...)

"To aggregate information means displaying it in a condensed form, transforming data so that few elements become representatives of many other. Several examples can be provided: synopsis and listing in writing, calculation and inference in statistics, diagrams and stylizations in design. All these techniques (and many other) are used by scientists to make complexity readable.""A scholar interested in, say, agenda-setting is only a few clicks away from the archives of hundreds of newspapers and magazines, the records of television newscasts, the press-releases of institutions and agencies, the full-text of blogs, forums, newsgroups. And that’s not all, with a little more effort, she can access the biography and bibliography of anyone who reported the story, the number of times the story has been searched on the Internet, the profiles of all actors involved and so on.""Digital mediation fills the observation gap between macro-structures and micro- interactions as it provides means to move from one to the other.""1. search engines are not the web; 2. the web is not the Internet;3. the Internet is not the digital;4. the digital is not the world."